No seriously, what vwild1 said...
I spoke with a grammy award winning artist a couple of years ago who said basically 'thank God for the internet'. He was selling less CDs but getting bigger and bigger crowds in places he'd never even been before on the basis of illegal downloads and videos people had put of him on youtube.
But even if it did happen:
1. "a few years ago", downloads might not have been legal yet
2. There's a difference between downloading and linking to pirated material.
Peter
From Rolling Stone:
Kid Rock Lashes Out Against iTunes, Endorses Illegal Downloading
Running servers with torrent links is not the same as a personal download.
a) it is not downloading, but distributing stolen stuff
b) it is usually not exactly private but for profit
These sites are usually full of advertisement and said piratebay.org is a business that made millions on ad revenues through offering stolen content. Some of which they have to pay back now as even the very open Swedish society draws the line there. I find it wrong that in many countries school kids are bullied into paying huge fines, but that does not mean that you have to tolerate people making profits on stolen copyrighted material.
If this is the case then they can hardly blame the consumers for wanting it for free when the artists copied parts of it in the first place
Crime is not a static absolute, what is criminal at one point in time and place, might not be a crime at another point.
torrent servers dont hold any "stolen" material, just torrent hash links.
i think it was suprnova or something like that which was raided but of course cant be sure, i did have a quick look for the story but cant see it, i do remember seeing it on the news though.
As I posted is the reason the Swiss courts have ruled to make private downloads legal the argument that you cannot expect every teenager to know if the song he is downloading is copyright protected or not.
From any business can and do Swiss courts expect that they spend the effort to find out if the stuff they are linking to is legal.
I think it is really common sense: Schoolkid downloading some mp3s does not get punished. People trying to make money from pirated material do get punished although probably very lightly compared to other forms of theft.
However, up-loading is illegal for everyone, not just those trying to make money.
Tom
Technically is pretty much everyone using torrents uploading as well. You can switch it off, but then some torrents won't work. I have not heard of a case in Switzerland where a private person was punished for this upload.
Downloading is tolerated because you actually don't know what your are downloading until it is completed (strange but actual rationale)
But copyright infringements are punishable, so you are not allowed to upload, and also in theory to keep the file that you have downloaded once you see it is subject to copyright.
But practically nobody has ever been sued for using peer-to-peer.
One of my friends downloads the latest movies for his son. The victim is his son who misses the experience of seeing films in the cinema.
There is also a victim if a film is downloaded that would have otherwise been bought. Then the people who invested in making the film don't get their cut, and those who rely on residuals don't get theirs. It's all very well pointing out that really rich people don't need your 15CHF (or whatever percentage they'd get out of it), but it's not just rich people who rely on residuals for income.
If you download a film, watch it, like it and buy it, then that's not a problem, in my view. What annoys me is well-payed people who download rather than shell out 15CHF, and then kid themselves that somehow they're striking a blow at big corp. They're not. They're merely tight-fisted hypocrites.
Downloading movies and music is legal. Uploading is not.
Downloading or uploading software is both illegal.
Ever tried suing an I.P. address ?